


learning to fall (don't try this at home)

by MulaSaWala



Series: sometimes things fall apart (so better things can fall together) [1]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Because it's Nathan, Brief mentions of infidelity, F/M, Gen, Past Relationship(s), Romance, past Nathan Ingram/Olivia Ingram, wygd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-02 23:49:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14556273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MulaSaWala/pseuds/MulaSaWala
Summary: "The Machine," Harold was careful to enunciate, "has been glitching in your presence for the past few weeks.""Oh?" Nathan raised a careful eyebrow."It keeps trying to call your attention to this woman," Harold said, bringing out a cellphone. "She's here at the park right now, painting.""Is she a terrorist, though?" Nathan felt the need to ask. Skill in painting, he reckoned, did not mean you couldn't design a bomb instead of a canvas. If you were so inclined."No, no," Harold shook his head, "By all accounts, she's a lovely woman, but completely ordinary. Nothing remarkable about her at all."Nathan gave it about a second of thought, before slapped his knee once and got up."Well then, let's go meet this completely unremarkable woman, Harold."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gracefultree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracefultree/gifts).



> "There, but for the grace of God, go I."

 

The park was filled with joggers, their breaths fogging in the cold air. Nathan wasn't among them, already in his business attire this early in the morning. He couldn't remember the last time he'd gone for a run that went somewhere, even if it was just going in a circle. He and the home treadmill were old friends.  
  
He was going to have to get rid of it. Sell everything in that house that had never been his home.  
  
Looping around the track for the final time, the man Nathan had been waiting for came into view. The bespectacled man made a beeline for the bench Nathan was occupying, jogging unhurriedly. Just seeing him lifted Nathan's mood. The jogger plopped down unceremoniously beside Nathan, residual warmth from the exercise radiating from his body. He was panting from his run, and Nathan could feel the heat of his skin through the layers of clothes between them. Nathan leaned in slightly to get comfy, softening the bite of the cold morning air.  
  
Harold reached for Nathan's bottle of water (bought specifically for Harold, who never bothered), almost finishing it in three long swallows, before handing it back to its rightful owner. Nathan swished around the remaining water, wishing the plastic bottle had contained something a little stronger. Like whiskey.

   
  
"We signed the divorce papers today."

 

Harold turned his head to give his friend a look. Seeing it even from the corner of his eye mad Nathan sigh. It was a look that he knew quite well. This was an old argument between them, Nathan's infidelity to someone Harold considered a decent woman. And really, Nathan didn't dispute that. Olivia was smart, she was funny, she was good-looking as all get-out, but...

Olivia had been someone his parents had chosen for him. The trophy wife they'd all hoped would lead him into claiming the mayor's office, the one that was his to lose, back home in Texas. When he was younger, he'd welcomed it, welcomed _her_ , as something inevitable in his life.

 

And then he'd met Harold in MIT.

 

The moment Harold had confided in him that he was on the run from the law, a youthful indiscretion gone terribly awry, Nathan knew that the course of his life would have to change. There was simply no way he'd risk exposing his best friend to that kind of scrutiny. Not for a position he didn't even want. Not when they'd gone through so much, first in MIT, then building their own company from the ground up. Not when Harold was finally starting to rebuild his life, and to rebuild it with Nathan in it.

It wasn't just Harold, of course. Nathan wouldn't be so insensitive as to lay all responsibility for his actions at Harold's feet. Nathan himself had begun to chafe under the weight of all the expectations placed on him by his parents. Even more so after the car accident, the expensive funeral. The phantom weight of their expectations still lingered, as if he was still expected to return home and fulfill their hopes and dreams for him.

Since he and Olivia had started their separation, Nathan had been vaguely searching for something meaningful in his life. For a purpose. It wasn't with other women, or at the bottom of the bottle. It wasn't in throwing his money at the world's problems. Even his and Harold's clandestine government contract couldn't get rid of the unsettled feeling he began to have under his skin. As if there was an itch he couldn't find, much less scratch.

Beside him on the bench, Harold bumped his knee with Nathan's, offering support. That made Nathan's mouth twitch into a brief smile. His friend so often sounded like a dictionary given vocal chords. So the idea of him being at a loss for words seemed funny to Nathan at that particular moment.

 

"It was a long time coming," he said, to himself or to Harold, he didn't know. "We'd been fighting for years, hadn't lived together for months."

Nathan ran a tired hand over his face. Was it wrong that he wasn't upset? No, neither was Olivia. No tears for their marriage; the two of them had simply gone their separate ways. Easier than some mergers Nathan had presided over, absorbing smaller companies into IFT.

That wasn't to say that he didn't have some... feelings, over the divorce. Just that his feelings were more about the divorce, than Olivia herself. More about losing the extremely high standard his parents had set-up for him. Nathan's parents were high school sweethearts, almost storybook in their union. They'd had their fair share of problems, Nathan knew, some of them even concerning him, but all in all, they'd been happily married for, what fifty years? That was half a century, _jesus_...

"Thank god we decided to wait on having a son. That would have been a disaster."

After a long moment to contemplate the bullet he and Olivia had managed to dodge, Nathan turned to his friend. He didn't expect a response from Harold about that, to his knowledge Harold had never seriously considered having children.

"Give me a distraction, Harold. What's our little science project been up to?"

 

At that, a familiar pinched look made its way to Harold's face. He hated referring to it as anything but 'The Machine,'. Nathan had told him that it sounded ridiculous. They bickered over this once in a while, the familiar arguments sliding on well-worn tracks.

Harold would say, "The Machine has a proper name, Nathan; use it."

To which Nathan would reply, "No, 'The Machine' is not a proper name, _Harold--_ it's barely a name at all."

"It's my creation, _Nathan_ , I get to name it whatever I wish." would be the inevitable supercilious reply.

"But you're _not,_ " Nathan would insist. " _The Machine_ is not a name, it's a noun we can use to talk about it in public."

And then Nathan would bring up the host of other fledgling AIs almost ready to be released on the market.

They were mostly kids' stuff, toys to play with. _Siri, Cortana, Alexa._ All of them were like small birthday candles to the bonfire of Harold's creation. And Nathan had no problem admitting that it was Harold's creation, that Nathan himself was nothing more than a vaguely glorified midwife to the whole process.

"The Machine," Harold was careful to enunciate, "has been glitching in your presence for the past few weeks."

"Oh?" Nathan raised a careful eyebrow. Hearing that was strange indeed. Both that Harold told him so (the man could be extremely close-mouthed about his, well, _everything_ ), and that there was a glitch that Harold couldn't figure out for weeks.

"It keeps trying to call your attention to this woman," Harold said, bringing out a cellphone. "She's here at the park right now, painting."

"Is she a terrorist, though?" Nathan felt the need to ask. Skill in painting, he reckoned, did not mean you couldn't design a bomb instead of a canvas. If you were so inclined.

"No, no," Harold shook his head, "By all accounts, she's a lovely woman, but completely ordinary. Nothing remarkable about her at all."

Nathan gave it about a second of thought, before slapped his knee once and got up.

 

"Well then, let's go meet this completely unremarkable woman, Harold."

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now we meet Grace! Yaaay!

Grace Hendricks did not believe in fate. That was a surprise to a lot of people, and she couldn't really blame them. She knew artsy-fartsy types were generally known for their belief in palm reading, and healing crystals, and various star signs.

Maybe her childhood had gotten rid of that particular brand of whimsy from her. An alcoholic father did that, she sometimes thought to herself. She was more familiar with the smell of cheap whiskey, than the patterns of the stars in the sky. She supposed that's why she painted such happy paintings, now. When she would submit her paintings to competitions or art shows, the critics who decided which entries would get in sometimes call her work "generic" or "bland". The nicer ones would say, "skillfully made, very nice to look at, but lacks depth."

Grace didn't care.

She had a day job as a data encoder at one of those computer farms, spent her days putting one column of numbers into another, and she didn't have any idea what any of it meant, except that it paid her rent, put food on the table, and let her do what she loved.

 

She had been painting an acrylic seascape when two men approached her. A tall, loud, blonde one, and a quieter one, with spiky brown hair and glasses.

She'd had half a mind to dismiss them outright, say she wasn't interested, and put in her earphones. That was usually a clear enough signal for anyone to go away.

This wouldn't be the first time she'd been hit on by men whilst painting. She didn't like being rude, but sometimes that was the only thing that got the message across. Something had stayed her hand this time, though. Kept her cordial, friendly. The two men had seemed more interested in her painting than anything.

The shorter one was well-read, referring to paintings she'd never heard of. She kept track of them in her head, would look them up later tonight. The tall one though ( _'The handsome one'_ , her traitorous mind noted, which, _no_. She was new in town, she absolutely didn't need a romance to complicate her life) didn't seem to know anything about art at all, but was happy to tell her when she'd asked what he liked about it, and how it made him feel.

She kept her eyes wide open, looking for any red flags, but all she saw was a sadness in the blond one's eyes, a loneliness in the one with the glasses.

("Nathan," he'd introduced himself, "And my friend here is Harold")

 

 _"I didn't manage to make a painting today,"_ she thought, _"But I think I just made some friends."_

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timeskip!
> 
> It's a month later now.

 

 

"I'm worried about Harold," Nathan said as he sat down beside Grace on the bench.

Grace made an inquiring noise, but she kept painting. It didn't take a genius to know that Nathan didn't have her attention. She was a lot like Harold, in that way. The way they could focus on just one thing. Nathan would have to wait until she was finished with whatever part had absorbed all of her attention, before he could expect his words to not just go in one ear and fall out the other. Nathan didn't mind, to be honest. Quite often, his first words were not his best words.

"Good morning," he tried again, when she finally pulled back from the canvas. He leaned in and saw that she'd just finished all the flowers in that one tree. Instead of the white flowers in the actual tree in front of her, she'd made them a bright and cheery yellow. Nathan didn't have an eye for art, not the way Grace and Harold did, but he thought they were lovely. He particularly liked how much care she took with each one. Like she enjoyed painting them all, and wasn't rushing to the finished work.

 

"Hello, Nathan! What brings you to the park today?" Grace finally replied, smiling as bright as the sun. Nathan determinedly ignored the way his heart flipped over in his chest, missing a beat.

 

The day they'd met her, the machine had stopped glitching, and Harold had been settled, becoming absorbed in his programming once more. Without Harold to keep him company, Nathan had taken a chance, coming to the park again to talk to Grace. He found her easily enough, but he also found her suspicious of his motives. 

"I'm not looking to date anyone, I'm sorry" she'd said as soon as he'd sat down beside her. Not to close, Nathan made sure, but not on the far end of the long bench either.

Nathan had held up his left hand, a tan line from his wedding ring still visible. "I just got divorced myself, so I'm about the same," he said as sincerely as he could.

Grace had relaxed a little after that. It meant a lot to Nathan, that she could trust him even a little. As time went by, she became more and more relaxed around him. And having Grace at ease was something Nathan found he really liked. There was something about her that drew him. First as a friend, and then, to his regret, something more.

Nathan had been born good-looking. It wasn't conceit (although Harold would tell him otherwise), it was a fact. And part of growing up that way was that he couldn't really recall having too many close female friends. In fact, not many close friends at all. He'd had friendships, of course. Shallow things that devolved into acquaintanceship as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

But he's found a good friend, a best friend, in Harold. And he'd found one in Grace, if only his libido would just get out of the way.

(He didn't care to examine why he hadn't slept with anyone since meeting Grace. When he was 15, he'd jumped aboard the sex train and never looked back; this was the longest he'd gone with just his hand as a partner.)

 

So, instead of examining his feelings, Nathan did what he did best, and meddled in someone else's life. It wasn't that he wasn't _aware_ of what his feelings were. He just... didn't think about them, was all. Didn't dwell.

"I'm worried about Harold," Nathan said again, answering Grace's question. He usually didn't come to the park on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a limit he'd imposed himself. He was the boss of the company, he could do what he liked. But he hadn't wanted to scare Grace away, so he'd dialed it down.

"Why?" Grace wanted to know. Fair point, She saw Harold often enough, when he went jogging in the morning. Although, from what Nathan could tell, he didn't stop to chat very often.

"I think he's working too hard," Nathan said, and it was true. Harold's, uh, _involve_ _d_ , programming style was beginning to have a tinge of manic energy to it. Which Nathan could relate to, honestly. He too, had graduated from MIT. So close to the date when they would hand over the machine, Nathan understood the rush, the panic, the frenzy. But still, it wasn't healthy.

 

Grace surprised him by beginning to put her painting materials away.

"What are you doing?" Nathan asked, even as he got up to help, folding her easel quickly enough with familiarity, if not yet the ease granted by lots of practice.

"Life is short, silly. I don't have anything to do today besides paint. Let's go drag Harold into the sun instead."

 

 _'I'm in love,'_ Nathan thought, and also, _'I'm doomed.'_

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

Today, she and Nathan were on the way to a museum together, to see an exhibit. She'd wanted to be a part of it, but the artworks she had submitted hadn't quite passed muster. But still, Grace didn't mind that the judges and the curators had gone another way. She wanted to go to the ribbon cutting, wanted to see something beautiful.

There was supposed to be three of them on today's trip to the museum, but Harold had begged off, taking a rain check on their weekend excursion. Something about work, like always, and while she relished the chance to spend time alone with Nathan, she was worried for her friend.  

She knew Nathan must have been higher up the corporate ladder, because he definitely had more control over his time, but given Harold's obvious dedication to his job, she hoped he got a promotion or something soon. That wasn't something she could relate to, if she was honest. She knew very well that her job, while paying well enough, did not offer any opportunities for advancement at all.

She didn't lead the most exciting life. Grace knew this about herself. She'd dropped out of community college to take care of an ailing, aging father. Years of drinking had taken its toll on him. He'd had liver cancer the last few years of his life, and it had fallen to Grace to take care of him, as his only child. Her mother had died long ago, a car crash soon after Grace had been born.

It...hadn't been easy, but she'd done it. Shortly after his death, she had moved to Washington, looking for a new start in a new city.

What she _hadn't_ been looking for, as she got her feet under her in an unfamiliar place, was a romance to complicate her life.

Still, she couldn't deny how thrilled she was, whenever she saw him. Nathan. Like he brightened up her day, just by being there. Harold did that too, she knew. Though he was jogging less and less these days, he stopped to chat more often, and the conversation was _delightful_.

It was a different feeling, though, with Nathan. They had only known each other a month or so, but she could tell that there was something there. Something that might grow into something _more_ , if she just gave it some water, some sunlight. Some love.

"Hey, Nathan, let's stop for a bit," she said, slowing her walk.

He matched her pace almost immediately, and led them closer to the side of a building, people parting naturally for him. Once upon a time, she would have thought that he was just used to that happening, how people accommodated him almost without thinking. In her experience, most people who had that kind of presence didn't notice it at all. But knowing him now, she knew he was almost painfully aware of how others perceived him. Tall, good-looking, and in an expensive suit, he tended to catch people's attention and not let go. One of the things she liked about him was that he almost always used it for someone else's benefit.

Like now.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, concern on his face. Grace looked up at him and shook her head. He had been nothing but the perfect gentleman to her. Even if she was guessing wrong, if he didn't feel the same way about her, she was sure they would remain friends.

The thought gave her enough courage to push through with her decision.

"Nothing's wrong," she said, shaking her head, "I just wanted to tell you that this could be a date, if you wanted."

"A date," he repeated.

"A date-date," she clarified, smiling.

And, _wow_ , if she thought Nathan had been handsome before, the smile on his face right now... She knew that she was going to paint that as soon as she could.

"I'm glad," he replied after a while. He reached down to take her hand, and she felt warm all the way down to her toes.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timeskip again!

 

"Harold, calm down, I can't understand what you're saying."

From his seat on the couch, Nathan sipped on his scotch and watched his friend pace around his apartment. It was a big apartment, a three-floor loft in the heart of Manhattan. Nathan quite liked it. However, he was pretty sure Harold hadn't come over in the middle of the night to admire his taste in interior design.

In all the years they'd known each other, Nathan had never seen him come this undone. And he couldn't figure out why. The government had already come and taken The Machine away; it had gone without a hitch. Harold had already caught a double agent with the partially completed Machine, had proved its worth beyond all reasonable doubt. Nathan couldn't see what the problem was.

 

In the meantime, Nathan had grown only closer to Grace. He found her lovelier with each passing day. He knew Grace didn't see herself as such, and at times he thought she was quite mad to think so little of herself. However, Nathan was well acquainted with the shortcomings of people, when it came to this, and he was sure that she'd thus far been surrounded by people who could not see her value, who could not see _her_.

Nathan wished he had her talent with a brush, or even Harold's poetry of language, so he could show her how much she meant to him, how he admired her, found her compelling. To himself, he thought of her as one of those strange, geometric pictures. You had to look a certain way to see the real picture beneath.

 

_"Nathan, are you listening to me?"_

_'No,'_ Nathan thought. He wisely kept that to himself.

"Take a deep breath, and start from the beginning." Nathan tried again.

"Where else would I begin, Nathan, the end?" Harold stopped pacing to glare at his blond friend. Nathan just gave a practiced shrug, goading his friend. It was a little thing, inconsequential in the long run, but right now, Nathan thought that being annoyed would be better for Harold than continuing to panic. 

As his relationship with Grace had developed, he'd found Harold... pulling away, somewhat. Since Harold and Grace had become close friends as well, Nathan had concluded that it was their project that consumed Harold. Nathan had been hoping that letting The Machine go would restore their friendship to its former state, remove some of the distance that had grown between them.

But even gone, it was causing Harold distress, and Nathan didn't know what to _do_.

 

"Nathan, to teach the machine to recognize terrorist plots, I had to start small."

"Yes."

"And you understand what that means?"

"Yes."

"And you're... okay... with that?"

"Harold, I think I'm not following. So you taught it a few logic puzzles? Why is this a problem now? Corwin and Weeks have already taken the Machine away, so they must like how it works just fine."

Here, Harold paused, staring out the window, and Nathan felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to stand. He'd been Harold's friend long enough to know that he wasn't going to like what came next.

"Nathan... to create a machine that could predict an event that would kill a lot of people, I had to teach it to recognize an event that would kill--"

"Just one person," Nathan finished for him. He stood up in alarm, moving to put a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Harold, what--"

"I call it the Irrelevant List. And Nathan,"

Harold made eye contact then, and Nathan had a brief moment to wonder what could be worse.

 

"You and Grace, you're on it."

 

"What." Nathan blinked.

"When I saw your names, I hacked into the NSA. I saw their plan, Nathan. They're going to blow it up.. The ferry, where you're going on a date with Grace tomorrow." Harold said in a rush.

"My god," Nathan walked back to the couch, falling into it. He drank the rest of his scotch down in one gulp.

Harold followed him, dropping to the couch beside his friend. Resting his elbows on his knees, Harold held his head in his hands. "I'm so sorry, Nathan. I shouldn't have built the Machine. I've put you in danger."

Nathan took a break from his own thoughts to look at his friend.

If Nathan was reeling right now, what must it have been like to live with this, live with the list, for months, _years_. Nathan couldn't imagine it. 

With his hands clenched hard in his lap, Harold squeezed his eyes shut. He was trembling like a leaf, and Nathan felt his heart go out to his friend. Of the two of them, He'd always thought of Harold as the more sensitive one. Nathan was accustomed to letting things go. Letting everything roll off him, like water off a duck's back. Harold was more like... a sponge, in Nathan's opinion. 

Nathan sighed, putting an arm around Harold's shoulder. Everything felt a little too big. Like it was all becoming more real, somehow. Nathan had done all the glad-handing with the government agents, been smiley and affable and charming. Harold had done all the coding, the nitty gritty details of the project that Nathan couldn't handle. But between the two of them, neither had quite grasped what the repercussions would be.

  
  
"Hey," Nathan said after a while. "It's okay, I'll cancel with Grace for tomorrow. We'll figure something out."

At that, Harold began visibly pulling himself back together. Running a hand through his hair, checking his cuff.  
  
"We- we have to leave, we have to go." Harold said, standing, straightening his tie.

 Nathan looked up at him. "What?"

"Leave. Drop everything and go."

Nathan winced at his tone. It was flat, and cold. "Harold--"

"That's not my real name, Nathan. Do you know why nobody knows my real name?" Harold was getting agitated again, and Nathan shouldn't have found that comforting, except he did.

"No one will ever know who I really am because I did what I had to do to survive. I built a new life from the ground up, and I'll-- I'll do it again, if I have to. I can do it, _we_ _can do it_. We can do it together, the two of us. But not if you're _dead,_ Nathan."

 

"What about Grace?" Nathan asked in morbid fascination. This was a side of Harold he'd never seen before.

"Once we've faked your death, she will no longer be in danger." Harold removed his glasses to clean them. "She'll be safe."

"Safe-- _Harold._ She's going to think I'm _dead_. That would hurt her so much, I couldn't live with myself if I did that to her."

Harold gave him a look, like he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"Just, let me talk to her first," Nathan said placatingly, coming to stand as well.

Harold took a deep breath, walking to the door. He looked better already, less lost. Like he had a plan. Nathan wished he felt that way as well, but all he felt was unmoored.

"Okay, good, say goodbye." Harold was saying, as much to himself than to Nathan, "Clean break, that's best. Tell Grace you want a more private outing. Tell her you'll just take your yacht out first thing tomorrow for a test run, and you'll meet her after lunch. They'll need her to identify a body as yours."

_'Body?'_ Nathan recoiled from the idea, but Harold spoke like he talked about bodies everyday. Nathan vaguely wondered if maybe he did, as Harold Ostrich, or Harold Seagull, or whatever identity he put on and off like a coat.

"Meet me at my Harold Martin house in three hours, okay?  I'll take care of it, I'll take care of everything. They've got an agent on the street in front of the lobby, but he's a rookie. If you use the blue Honda I parked in the garage, he won't see you."

Then he left before Nathan could say another word, just a quick "Be careful, Nathan," and he was gone, leaving a set of keys on the table beside the door.

"You too," Nathan said into the empty apartment.

 


	6. Chapter 6

When Nathan had told her about being, to put it plainly, stupidly rich, she thought that was the biggest surprise he would ever give her. She had a list of other surprises in her back pocket, things she thought he might be waiting to tell her. Like being allergic to cats, or hating amusement parks. Maybe. She was keeping an open mind.

Being on the run from the government? Not one of them. Not even a little bit on the list.

Harold and Nathan were nearby, arguing. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but she could guess the gist of it.

She tried not to let it hurt her feelings, that they'd kept this secret from her. It was completely out of her league. In fact, she still wasn't quite sure she fully understood. A computer program that could predict murders? It sounded like something from a sci-fi paperback. She still had to type in that captcha whatever to prove she was _human_ , how could a computer program tell what she would have for dinner, much less if she wanted to kill someone?

No, the hurt wasn't because they'd kept the Machine (as Harold called it) a secret from her. What hurt was that Harold would have left her wondering, or god forbid, thinking he was dead.

She knew that he had the best intentions at heart. In the months she'd known him, talking as they shared ice cream in the park, she knew him to be as kind as he was intelligent. She could understand why he might have decided that the best thing for her to do was move on. But truthfully, she would have been devastated. Knowing herself, she thought she might never have recovered, not all the way

 

It took a few more minutes, but Nathan and Harold seemed to come to an agreement after a while. They walked back to the car, to her, with Harold visibly agitated. Nathan immediately went to stand at her side, and she leaned gratefully against his warmth, her hand finding his.

 

"I only have two bodies ready," Harold began, and Grace very carefully didn't ask why he had access to fresh corpses.

"Nathan and a lowly company employee looking to make an extra hundred dollars were supposed to perish in a boating accident. That employee would have been me. With no family to claim the corpse, the corpse would have been cremated according to Harold Martin's will. You were going to identify Nathan's body. Were supposed to."

Nathan's grip around her hand tightened at that. Grace returned the favor.

"Plans change, Harold."

In front of them, Harold just sighed. Rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. After a few moments of silence, he seemed to come to a decision.

"The two of you must be at the wharf by seven," he said, bringing a phone out of his coat. Grace wondered how many he had in there, because it was the fourth one she'd seen him use tonight tonight. The coat must weigh a ton.

"I'll text you further instructions before then,"

Harold held up a hand to forestall Nathan's objections. Grace was feeling uneasy as well. Harold seemed to be the only one who had any idea what to do; did they really have to split up?

"Please. Trust me. I'm not deliberately keeping either you in the dark this time. I'm also making this up as I go along." He checked his watch, paused like he was doing some calculations in his head. "I have to go set everything up."

He handed Grace the keys for the beat-up green Mazda he's arrived in, giving her instructions to drive. Before he could turn away, Grace pulled him into a hug. Nathan enveloped them both.

"Stay safe."

 

\---

 

She and Nathan had been in an ambulance putting on EMT uniforms (as Harold's last text had instructed them to) when they heard it. The explosion. From the coast, they saw the enormous plume of smoke. The flames. For a few terrifying minutes, they were sure that Harold had died. To keep them safe. But then the radio aboard the ambulance announced that the coast guard had dragged Harold Martin out of the water, along with two unrecognizable corpses, burnt almost to a crisp.

Grace had always thought that Nathan was the crazy one between the two friends. But it looked like she was completely, utterly _wrong_. Because Harold had just set off a bomb in Nathan's yacht. With himself still in it. _'For verisimilitude,'_ she could almost hear his voice in her head. But no, he was on an ambulance gurney in front of her. _  
_

Disguised as paramedics, Nathan and Grace had driven to the place where the emergency personnel were administering first aid. It was surreal to her, the sirens and the crowd parting for her uniform. Ducking beneath the yellow tape to where Harold lay almost lifeless.

 

The on-site EMTs did almost all the work, loading Harold into the back of the ambulance when they were done. There weren't any other casualties, but everyone nearby was being evacuated. With the commute ferry nearby, it was chaos.

As they drove away, she received another text, from a different number this time. It was strange to get texts from Harold while he was unconscious in front of her.

The text told them to declare Harold dead in transit, that there was a pre-filled out form in one of the shelves in the ambulance. They were to call it in at the hospital that Harold had died. That they were taking him straight to the morgue. Beneath the forms, Grace found an ID card on a strap. It had Harold's face on it, but the name beneath read 'Norman Tanager'.

As she relayed all of this to Nathan, she saw his grip get tighter and tighter on the steering wheel. It occurred to her that she'd never seen him angry before. Perhaps frustrated, irritated, tired and hungry, but never angry.

 

"We're not doing that, we're taking him to a hospital," Nathan said through gritted teeth. Grace considered that Nathan had probably never been in a situation so out of his control. From her place in the back of the ambulance, Grace reached over to put a hand on his shoulder.

A few minutes later, Nathan made a turn, and an alarm came on inside the ambulance. It wasn't loud enough to disorient the driver into crashing, but it was loud enough to make their ears ring. They wouldn't be able to go on; they had to find the source and turn it off. Fortunately, it seemed like the alarm was only going off inside the ambulance, not outside where it would attract attention.

There weren't any other vehicles around, so Nathan was able to make a quick U-turn. They had passed a shoulder less than a mile back, so Nathan drove back to it. But the alarm stopped long before they got to there. The loud noise and the sudden lack of movement must have penetrated Harold's subconscious, because he came awake.

"Grace? Where's Nathan?" Harold looked a bit wild around the eyes. He tried to get up before Grace could stop him, but fell back against the gurney, crying out in pain. With his left hand, he reached for his neck. 

"Harold? Are you okay?" Nathan said from the front seat, craning his neck as far as it would go. In a moment, he took off his seatbelt and bounded from the driver's seat, slamming the door in his haste. Grace gave Harold her hand to hold as he tried to breathe through the pain. She pressed their tangled hands against her chest. Her heart was beating fast, but she kept her breathing as even as she could. As she'd hoped, Harold soon followed, taking deep, painful looking gulps of air.

Looking at her friend in so much pain, everything that had happened in the last few hours became suddenly, terrifyingly, real. Grace's eye's filled with tears, and she wiped at them in frustration. So far, it had been almost like a game. AN elaborate scavenger hunt. The explosion at the docks had shocked her, but it was only now that the implications were starting to sink in. How could they not? From where she sat, she could see where Harold's blood was starting to stain the white bandages that the EMTs had put on him. She didn't even know how to replace them.

The tears came faster.

Nathan re-entered the ambulance from the back, closing the door behind him. He tried calling to Harold a few more times, holding his other hand, but it was to no avail. It took them a minute to figure out why he wasn't responding.

 

The explosion. Harold couldn't hear them.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol, Harold is very firmly driving the escape here. I know Nathan and Grace seem a bit passive, but honestly, they're still in that place between shock and disbelief. On the other hand, this isn't Harold's first rodeo, so he's fine taking the reigns for a bit.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timeskip again! 
> 
> This is probably around a month after this AU's version of the ferry incident.

As it turned out, Harold had predicted that Nathan would want to take him to a hospital, instead of the morgue.

( _'Imagine that,'_ Nathan would think sarcastically much later, after Harold explained himself. _'I didn't want to drive my injured, possibly dying, friend straight to a place for dead people.'_ )

The alarm had sounded seemingly at random, until Nathan noticed that it began ringing whenever he deviated from the path Harold had set, driving away from the morgue. As soon as he figured it out, Nathan wanted to bang his head against the steering wheel. Of all the...

Nathan was going to kill Harold _himself_ after this, the bastard.

The good news was that there was someone with medical training waiting for them. The bad news was, that it was a veterinarian.

"I used to be a surgeon, back in Tekrit," the man who had introduced himself as Farouk Madani said. When Nathan asked who he was, as they pushed the gurney inside, Madani said that Harold had given him the deed to this establishment, in exchange for his services whenever Harold needed them. Since Harold would provide all the equipment, and was paying him an exorbitant amount of money besides, Madani had thought it a fair trade.

"This is actually a funeral home, not a morgue. If you could explain the difference to your friend, that would be great."

Nathan watched him closely, for any sign that he was merely chatting to cover up some nervousness about Harold's injuries. But no. He appeared genuinely calm.

"Was your friend in the attack? On the news?"

Nathan nodded at the same time Grace said yes. On any other day, Nathan would have been more cautious. Kept that information closer to vest. Today, he just wanted to save Harold's life.

Grace asked him how he knew.

"I saw a lot of this back in Iraq," Madani replied.

He pointed to the the little cuts and tears in Harold's suit. "No burn marks, and not a lot of damage from shrapnel. That means he was quite some distance away from the blast center."

"See those cuts?" Madani shone a penlight into Harold's ear, gesturing for both of them to take a look. "Your friend was wearing earplugs. Hopefully, that means hearing loss is temporary. We'll find out for sure in two days."

 

\---

 

Harold's deafness was temporary, as it turned out. He found that out the hard way when Nathan yelled at him for being so reckless. Grace hadn't raised her voice, but the way she looked at Harold, sad and hurt and disappointed, made him wish she had.

What Nathan found out was that it was hard to stay angry at someone when they were injured. He couldn't be properly mad at Harold when the injured man was in almost constant agony.

Nevertheless, Nathan managed it for about a week, after what he referred to in his head as _'the yacht incident'_. Nathan was angry, sure, and grateful (although that went without saying). There was some guilt in there as well, something he knew he'd have to work on himself. Maybe if he hadn't blindsided Harold with Grace's presence, Harold could have come up with a safer plan?

Nathan shook his head. There was no use to dwelling too much on something that he couldn't change.

In the meantime, he kept himself busy with the legwork for creating their new identities. It wasn't as glamorous as Nathan thought it would be, mostly filling up forms and mailing them, pretending he was Normal Joe going about his day. When he'd asked, Harold had told him that there were more clandestine ways, of course. Many ways to simply purchase a pre-made identity from the Black Market. But Harold preferred making them himself. It was safer that way, Harold insisted. Nathan had just sighed, and started filling out a form for a library card.

Grace was more useful, helping Harold with his rehab. Considering what she'd gone through with her father, both Harold and Nathan had expressed some concerns; they didn't want to remind her of what must have been a painful experience. But Grace had been the one to insist. And she was merciless too, pushing Harold as far as he could safely go (but allowed him absolutely no further, even on the days when Harold himself wanted to do more reps, in a misguided attempt to speed up his recovery).

 

Of course, Harold himself already had a number of spare identities to fall back on. The three of them had a grand time picking out which one Harold should inhabit more permanently, making things up as they went along. Nathan had a hand in creating Harold Cormoran, an investment banker, while Grace suggested that Harold Passerine own a bookstore. 

"Harold Martin and Harold Wren are both burned," Harold had told them.

"One of them almost literally," Nathan had refrained from saying.

Norman Burdette too, but Harold had intimated that he had never been too fond of Burdette. He was too serious by half. Right now, he was Harold Partridge. On paper, Harold Partridge had been transferred to a hospital in New York after being in a car accident. Harold was recovering as well as could be expected, the doctors told Nathan and Grace.

Although, the doctors told them, there would be permanent damage to his hip and spine. Despite Madani's best efforts, it seemed that delaying the treatment a single day, to distance Harold's injuries from the explosion, had made the injuries worse. 

Harold didn't blame anyone for his injuries except himself. When Nathan had spoken to him about it, accepting that Harold might blame him (perhaps rightly so, Nathan figured), Harold had only said that he should have known that would happen. He should have made a better plan.

Currently, Harold was wheelchair-bound, still going through physical therapy, but he was already making plans for the three of them. It helped take his mind off the pain, so the three of them had fun with it, creating elaborately detailed scenarios and identities for themselves.

 

\---

 

The only problem was the Irrelevant list. The machine was still getting numbers to Harold, somehow. It had several phones delivered to him, and was sending him social security numbers. Harold had taken one look at the phones, and wanted to throw each and every one of them out the hospital window.

His companions disagreed. Between the two of them, Nathan and Grace convinced Harold that they should do something to help the people on the Irrelevant List. Had to save them using the Machine. How could they not, if they were willing to use the Machine to save themselves?

Harold capitulated, but not without complaints. He was sure that it would all turn out horribly, and that they would fail.

Honestly, Nathan was of the somewhat same opinion. He thought they would fail more than they would succeed. But then he would looked at Grace, and be more certain than ever that saving even just one life would be worth it.

Harold called it the Irrelevant List, because the people on it weren't important enough to be a involved in the nation's security. Nathan disagreed.

 _'Everyone is relevant to someone,'_ he thought.

And even though they were likely to fail (because no one became what amounted to a superhero overnight), that didn't mean they shouldn't __try.__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so remember how free the Machine was at the start of season 3? Think of the Machine as that free from the get-go. Harold never programmed it to delete itself every night, so it's pretty free.

**Author's Note:**

> It's not as long as I would have preferred it to be, I hope you like it. :D 
> 
> Happy PoI Exchange Gracefultree!


End file.
